The Love Series Complete Box Set (21 page)

I nod my head ‘yes’ at her line of reasoning. I know deep down that if I hadn’t slept with Alex, and exposed Shane’s secret, then he would still be here.

“I never blamed myself for my parents dying. I mean, there really was nothing anyone could’ve done.”

I huff a sarcastic laugh at her. If she’s trying to make me feel better about my guilt, then she’s failing miserably.

She backtracks and says, “What I mean is that even though I never felt responsible for them dying, I still felt the pain of their death. I know that all-encompassing grief you’ve felt, that you’re feeling right now—the kind of grief that keeps you up at night, threatening to eat you whole. So you do your best to protect yourself, to keep the world at bay, and everyone at arm’s length. You learn to protect whatever is left of your heart because you can’t even begin to fathom what it would feel like to have the small piece that remains broken along with the rest. I don’t know how to begin telling you to forgive yourself, but I do know that you are a good man I love more than anything. I’m here for you. I want to help you figure out your past and figure out how to move on, just like you’ve helped me figure mine out, just like how you’re helping me move forward.”

She pauses, and I see her trying to piece together the rather lengthy story I’ve laid before her.

“Will you tell me the rest?” she asks timidly.

I’ve never been forthcoming about my family, and I know she can tell that there’s something I’m keeping from her. Feeling emboldened by her inner strength, I tell the rest.

“Well, after Alex found out what she wanted, she drove me home and promised not to tell a soul. Fucking bullshit. I could see it in her face. She was embarrassed that she had been duped, that her boyfriend had tried to fool her. She was most definitely a woman scorned, and she was on a mission to destroy Shane for making her look bad. It was five years ago, and I was still in high school, so I didn’t know much about Facebook and MySpace and all those social networking sites. Alex did, though, and she used them to make Shane’s life a living hell. She made a video of snapshots that she had taken of the two of them throughout their relationship and used it to out his sexuality. It was mean and cruel and just downright vindictive.

“Like I said, we lived in a small, close-minded town. Denning, that’s where I grew up—a small rural upstate New York town—is only about five hundred people. They’re mostly farmers, blue-collar workers. People who live there have had roots there for generations, and they don’t take well to anything that isn’t
normal.
People down the road knew when you farted, so word of Shane being gay spread quickly. When he came home from class one night, a few days after my encounter with Alex, my parents were waiting on the couch to confront him. They told him that he had to leave. No son of theirs was gay. They wouldn’t house ‘that kind of person.’ He stopped being their son in an instant. They stopped loving him. They made him leave. I couldn’t believe how cruel and callous they were treating their own son. But Shane, he didn’t fight or yell and scream or anything. He just walked away, head hung low. I know they’re not really dead, but in that moment, the people I thought were my parents died right before my eyes.

“I can’t imagine how bad the bullying online and in school must have been for him, either. When he walked past me on the stairs, his eyes were sad, dejected, pained, but somewhere in there I saw relief, too—relief that the truth was out. A small fleck of hope sprang from that shimmer of relief. I started to think that maybe things would be okay, that maybe he would figure things out and that all of this shit would just go away in the morning.

“But it didn’t. When I woke up the next morning, Shane was gone. When I went downstairs to find him, my parents were sitting at the table, eating their breakfast and sipping their coffee like nothing happened. I yelled and screamed at them. Told them they’d lost their fucking minds, that they were heartless and fucking worthless if they could just disown their own flesh and blood for being gay. They told me that if I felt that way, I should leave, too. I felt like I was looking at strangers. They were my parents. I had obviously known them my entire life, but when they told me that, I felt like I was in some kind of twilight zone or some shit like that.

“So that afternoon when I knew they would be at work, I cut out of school early to come home and pack my bags. I was going to find Shane and leave with him. Wherever he was going, I didn’t want him to be alone, and I most certainly didn’t want to be in my own house any longer. As I was walking home, I had this gnawing feeling in my gut that something was wrong. I ran and ran and ran to get home as quickly as I could.”

I pause, trying to gather whatever strength I can for this next part. The deep breath that I take racks my lungs, like that of a child who has sobbed itself to sleep.

“He was in the tub, wrists slit, blood everywhere. I was too late. There was nothing I could do. He killed himself because of me and my fucking mistake. He left a note, but all it said was that he was sorry that he couldn’t be who they wanted him to be. I killed him. It’s all my fault that my brother is dead.” The tears claim me full force now.

Maddy just pulls me closer to her side and sinks down onto the bed with me in her arms. After long moments pass in silence, and I finally calm myself down, she asks, “That’s why you want to work with kids, isn’t it?”

I smile before saying, “Yes. Sixteen-year-old me blames myself for everything that happened with Shane, but twenty-one-year-old me knows that maybe if he had someone to turn to, he might still be here. I couldn’t be there for him like that, but maybe I can be there for someone else.”

She smiles at me lovingly and then just holds me. We don’t say anything for a while; we just bask in the feel of one another, reveling in the comfort of having someone who understands your pain.

I get lost thinking about how happy things were before Shane died, about how much I loved my life and my family. That all came crashing down in an instant. I know Maddy understands that; she had no warning where her parents’ deaths were concerned. Her world shattered instantly, just like mine.

She must have some kind of ability to read my thoughts, because as I’m thinking about how my parents are essentially dead to me, she asks about them. “So what happened with you and your parents, then?”

I can’t help but sigh and laugh flippantly. “Well, they essentially kicked me out, and I was ready to leave with Shane. But after he died, I lost the will to do much of anything. I lived in a numb fog for the last year and a half of high school. I just existed. We passed each other in the kitchen or in the hallway that connected our bedrooms, but never said a word. When I graduated, I packed up and never looked back. I haven’t heard from them since. They never tried to contact me, and I never bothered with them.”

If she thinks less of me for cutting my parents out of my life when hers are really and truly gone, she’s hiding it well.

“So, then how do you pay for school? And this house? I mean, I know it’s not the Ritz, but you don’t have a job or anything. So without your parents helping out, how do you afford all of this? And the money that you spent on yesterday, too—where is all of that coming from if you’re on your own?”

“This is where they earn their ‘Parents of the Year’ award,” I quip angrily. “After Shane killed himself, and my parents learned of all the online shit, they went after Alex for something like defamation of character or wrongful death or something like that. I stopped paying attention to anything that they did, and they left me alone. They wanted nothing to do with me because I was mourning Shane. I just couldn’t understand how they could act like he never even existed. Anyway, they wanted all traces of him being gay erased. They wanted Alex to take her words back, even though they were true. They had no interest in the money, really—it was tainted with Shane’s homosexuality. They just wanted to save face. So when they settled out of court, they put the money in a college fund for me. I’m pretty sure they’d flip if they knew that I was using the money to invest in a career to help kids who were like Shane. But really, I never wanted to touch the money, and aside from tuition, rent, and the basic living expenses, I’ve never spent a dime of it. Until you, that is.” I get lost in reminiscing about how much happiness I’ve been able to share with her because of that money. “Shane would have loved you, you know.” The silence stretches again, and this time my fear is what causes me to break it. “So where does this leave us, Maddy?”

She looks lost at my question, and I can’t tell if that’s a good or a bad thing. “What do you mean, ‘where does that leave us’?” She situates us so that we’re lying next to each other, face to face, looking in each other’s eyes.

“I’ve been holding all this back because I just had this feeling that you would leave me if you knew. You’re too good for me, for my past, and between everything that happened with Alex and essentially killing my brother . . .”

She doesn’t let me finish my train of thought. Her lips silence me, and I feel like I can breathe again. She wouldn’t be kissing me if she was leaving me.

“Reid, I said I love you. Now, this may come as a shock to you,” she’s trying to be playful, arching her eyebrows—God, I love her, “but I don’t throw those words around lightly. That’s some really serious stuff you’ve been carrying around with you, and I hate that you felt like you couldn’t tell me. I’m here for you, baby. I love you, and nothing you did, even though none of that was really your fault . . .”

I try to interrupt her, but she just shoots me a stern “shut up” look.

“It wasn’t, Reid—none of it was your fault at all. Alex seduced you. She raped you, essentially. Sure, you weren’t held down or violently beaten, but she got you drunk and seduced a sixteen-year-old to get a piece of information that she didn’t have a right to know in the first place. You were a kid, for God’s sake. Your brother trusted you, and she played you. You didn’t deliberately betray him. You didn’t disown him like your parents did. You were actually going to leave with him, to be there for him and support him. And you most certainly didn’t hold the blade to his arm. Think of how much pain and suffering he must have dealt with to make that decision. That wasn’t your fault, baby. You’re even dedicating your career to helping other kids like Shane. I’d say that’s pretty fucking awesome. You have to forgive yourself. Otherwise, the guilt and anger will eat you alive.”

I am in awe of this beautiful and compassionate woman. How the fuck did I get so lucky to have her in my life? “Maddy, you make everything sound so simple. God, I love you. I can’t forgive myself completely, and I can’t swallow the anger and pain entirely, but for the first time since it all happened, I’m willing to try. You make me want to try.”

I kiss her and pour as much emotion as I can into it. She fucking amazes me. She doesn’t run; she doesn’t turn her back on me; she doesn’t pity me. She is just there for me, holding me when I need to be held, listening to me when I need to be heard, wiping the tears away when they stain my cheek.

Maddy breaks the kiss to say, “I love you, Reid.” She inhales a huge, cleansing breath—a cue to change the subject—and when she huffs it out, she says, “So I’m going to shower now and get that monster of a bird in the oven. Did you guys put a hit out on Big Bird or something, because it’s abnormally huge?”

“Oh, shit, Maddy! I completely forgot that today was Thanksgiving and that we have to make dinner for nine people in,” I reach for my phone to see what time it is and see that I have five missed calls, all from the same fucking unknown number, “like six hours.”

“It’s okay, baby. I got this under control. You just have to sit there and look pretty.” She smirks a sarcastic grin in my direction. “I’m going to shower and then start cooking.”

As she walks away from the bed, I slap her ass playfully. I love that she brings that out in me—that light playfulness. God, if she wasn’t here today, after that nightmare, I’m not really sure what I would be doing. I definitely wouldn’t be laughing and smiling. I’ve never been more thankful for anything in my life.

I hear the water turn on and join her in the bathroom. I can use at least one of those six hours showing her just how thankful I am.

She’s already under the hot spray, rinsing the soapy lather out of her long, luxurious mane. Water sluices down her perfect body. I could watch the scene before me for hours. Her long, lean legs go on forever, and when they do end, they are topped with the most glorious ass I have ever seen in my life. It’s full, round, and firm; I could sink my teeth into it. Her hips and waist are soft and full, perfectly feminine. She is a far cry from those skin-and-bones models out there that everyone says are perfect. Well, if they think that is perfect, then it’s clear they’ve never seen Maddy.

She’s still facing away from me as I strip out of my boxers and slide in behind her. She gasps in audible shock, “You scared the crap out of me, Reid! What are you doing in here?”

She’s trying to cover up—silly girl. I wrap my arms around her waist and pull her so that her back slides up against my front; the water makes our bodies glide together in a perfectly delicious way. I kiss her neck softly before biting it more than a little lightly. She shivers and leans into my lips.